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child's pose
something in the simple. not forcing your body but not letting go. active-comfort-rest. i can go back to you whenever i need to. when my muscles ache. when i am anxious, tired, or stressed. i bring myself close to my body, feeling my core. my heart beats throughout my core and i feel connected to who i am, physically and emotionally. bowing down to my own person. the ground rises up through me and i learn to see passed my body through to the "swinging door". for those moments the supreme universe gives me a sense of knowledge that makes me feel secured.

forward bend
it feels good to have forgotten a pony tail holder- my hair falls forward as i reach towards the ground. as the soft strands sway and graze my skin i feel a coolness against my pores. my skin is refreshed as i pour myself forward, diving deeper and deeper. so slowly that i feel like i am dripping downwards. my flesh is thick honey on the cone of my spine. bringing my crown to the earth, and my mind lays down its words there and my thoughts flow without divisions. as i rise up i am the time lapse reel of a flower growing straight up towards the sun.

Today yoga was a lot harder than usual. We incorporated a lot of palates elements, as well as trying some new more challenging poses. I felt exhausted afterwards. My teacher told me that I need to work on my "core strength" :/ I know I need a lot of strengthening work. I have virtually no arm strength at all- twig arms. I think I'm going to try to incorporate strengthening exercises into my daily routine, as well as running. I think this could be good for me. As much as I love yoga and it's relaxing effects, but I think I also need some more active form of exercise to get adrenaline pumping and hopefully give me more energy in my daily life. I can tend to be a little sloth like at times... I know that when I used to run cross country it was a good way to keep me active and it was also good for keeping my mind/body in balance. It's just a hard thing to get back into after you've been out of it for so long. I'm also not very good at motivating myself... But hopefully if I take it slowly, try to run with some friends, and try to keep with it I can get back into the swing of things

This week I've been doing resting poses so that I can try to focus on my deep breathing. It's still hard to stay focused, but the more that I've been doing it, the more I've gotten used to it. I've found that deep breathing and resting yoga poses really do lower my stress and anxiety levels, and are very refreshing. A couple times this week when I was very tired I would spend a half hour or so doing resting poses and deep breathing instead of just taking a nap. I still love to sleep, but sometimes naps leave you groggier than you were before (not good for when you still have work to do afterwards!). Yoga however, feels much more restorative. My mind gets a chance to zone out, my body rests, I get lots of oxygen swirling around in my brain, and my muscles get nice healthy stretches- a great package deal! Also, I'm in love- isn't that swell?

This week in yoga class we learned Pranayama- the art of yoga breathing. The idea is to use your lungs to full capacity, an idea we also tried in our meditation during body & soul this week. It was an interesting and difficult process. Breathing is something we do all of our lives, but we hardly ever pay attention to it. When you learn to focus on your breathe you can learn that it is a very fulfilling and relaxing technique that allows you to truly appreciate one of the most important involuntary functions of the body. First we started of learning to use our abdomen to help fully inhale and exhale by expanding/contracting the belly. Then we integrated chest breathing- after the belly is expanded and full of air in the abdomen you allow the air to push up into your chest, expanding your rib cage outwards. The steps were combined until we could find a rhythmic wave-like pattern of breathing with belly and chest fully expanding and contracting. Then our teacher taught us that by tightening the muscles in the throat (as if to puff hot air to fog up a mirror) we could send air even deeper into our lungs, this is known as the deepest possible breathing This was a very hard process to get down. I had to really focus to make sure I kept my throat muscles active. It was especially hard while doing other yoga poses because it is so easy to forget about your breathing, as that is what we're used to.

being a girl is rough. people give you a hard time if you say you're a "feminist" because it is so easy to overlook all the hardship women still face. but we definitely still have a long way to go. i've loved reading bordo, i think that some parts are things every woman needs to hear. i have so many friends with fucked up body images and i'm killing myself trying to help them, but it's so hard. yoga has been a really good activity for getting away from negativity about the body. it's exercise that makes me feel good and healthy, but it's not an exercise that forces me to think about image (like most do).

Yoga has been going really well. I take a class at Coles once a week and have been doing some simple poses (mainly savasana- aka "the corpse", laying flat and the floor with the goal of "conscious relaxation") at home as well. I want to start going to Yoga For the People, as I've heard good things about their by-donation classes, and I feel I get more out of yoga when I actually devote time outside of my room to it. I am not an extremely busy person, I mean, I should be- there are a lot of things I need to be doing... but it seems like even when I'm "not doing anything" it's not true relaxation. That's what I really like about yoga- I always feel completely refreshed, physically and emotionally afterwards. It is a kind of relaxation that does a lot more for you than just vegging out. I like that yoga is a time to really focus on myself. I'm very introverted and so I spend a lot of time going through my thoughts anyways, but I get caught up in helping other people a lot. It seems like a lot of my friends are constantly looking to me for advice, and I'm glad they do, but it can be really draining trying to solve others problems all the time. I mean, what do I know? I guess I'm a rational person (most of the time) and I can see other people's situations clearly, but most of the good advice I give I don't follow in my own life. Maybe instead of doing more yoga classes every week I will try a more high energy activity like running. I suppose I could do more intense yoga classes, but the beginner class I'm in is already challenging to me, I think I would be totally lost if i tried something more difficult. I used to run a lot and those were some of my healthiest times, physically and mentally. I feel so apathetic lately, I'm hoping some adrenaline inducing exercise might help give me some motivation in other areas of my life. Okay, this entry was kind of a random, but hey- it's a blog.

So this is my new blog for the action project. I already handed in this entry but I'm typing it up so that everything is in one place.

2/4/07

Today I took my first ever yoga class. I loved it- relaxing and challenging. THe teacher told us that each class we're going to focus on a different body party. This time it was our "base"- hands and feet. It was interesting and difficult to stay focused on body parts you are used to using without thinking. We constantly had to keep our hands and feet "active". She told us to say "hello" to them. I really liked that yoga gave me time to focus on my body, contribute to its well being, and allow me to have time to think. Not many activities give you the space or the medium to feel yourself as a bodily and spiritual person. I hope that yoga will give me strength, control, and awareness in my body. I also hope it will relieve the anxiety that is too often a by product of a busy life, especially in this city.